PD isn't really a "license", because it's entirely unconditional. But yes, we should mention that PD works are allowed. Jpatokal 11:36, 11 October 2007 (EDT)

asking permission to use forum reply at Wikitravel

I have received a valuable knowledge from other person on a forum/blog outside Wikitravel. Does someone have a template for a message asking whether pieces of that text can be used at Wikitravel? And I think this a good question for our FAQ here. --DenisYurkin 08:31, 26 January 2008 (EST)

I have the following text--how good is it for the above purpose?

Hi (person name).

Do you mind if I use some pieces of your post (its URL) to contribute to an article on Rome at Wikitravel, a free online travel guide written and edited entirely by travelers from around the globe?

I just realized an issue in this: with template like this, we promise attribution but don't actually add original author's name into "Based on work by ...". What we can do with this? --DenisYurkin 03:51, 9 February 2008 (EST)

Nothing. It Would Be Nice If(tm) we could add names to the attribution list somehow, but I don't think the Mediawiki software allows it. Jpatokal 06:39, 9 February 2008 (EST)

But the license requires us do provide attribution whatever it takes from us in terms of software (or manual work), doesn't it?

Revisions

Our copyleft has been rather neglected over the years, and is currently confusing and inadequate to explain how licensing works on Wikitravel (IMHO). I'd like to propose these revisions to the copyleft. Here's the revised version in my sandbox: User:Peterfitzgerald/Copyleft. These changes, I think, should at the very least clarify how we have been doing things over the past several years, and would provide a basis to make necessary updates to several other outdated policies (most notably, en:Wikitravel:How to re-use Wikitravel guides). Do these changes seem reasonable? Have I gotten anything wrong? --PeterTalk 02:35, 21 February 2008 (EST)

Personally, I believe that the current page assumes a great deal of understanding of licensing from a reader--and is hard to understand by others. Q&As like "how can I re-use texts from forum replies" would seriously help, in my belief. --DenisYurkin 04:19, 21 February 2008 (EST)

Fair enough, I've now added more basic information for contributors to the FAQ section. I think it's important to keep the "licensing" section clear and precise, regardless of how confusing it may be for the uninitiated. The problem is that the article serves different groups of readers—those looking to redistribute & create derivative works, and those simply trying to understand what they need to do to start contributing. Hopefully the new FAQ entries should help with this. I will mention, though, that a side benefit of moving our site licensing from CC-by-SA 1.0 only for text to CC-by-SA any, is that it would significantly simplify our site licensing and make these issues less confusing. --PeterTalk 19:09, 21 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks; q&as like these are definitely helpful. --DenisYurkin 04:17, 22 February 2008 (EST)

Any objections to implementing the revisions as I made them at in my sandbox? Otherwise, I'll make them live (and will be sure to preserve Denis' last edit). --PeterTalk 16:29, 23 February 2008 (EST)

Protection?

Should we protect this page against anon edits longer term? It's a serious spam magnet lately, and being one of our most important pages, do anon's really ever need to edit it? – cacahuatetalk 18:45, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

I protected the local spam blacklist recently, because of the same reason. However, it feels like the spammers target the different Wikitravel sites in turn - sv: was swamped a few months ago, but with loads of cleaning and blocking spam accounts and IP's, they stopped and currently they seem to be here. The reason I doubt, in this case, is that protecting a page is not something we do happily. Could the spammers spam to make us protect or lock the page and thus prevent contributions? Some sort of hidden agenda? Personally, I do not think so, not as long as the spam do not enter the guide articles. In other words - meta pages, which are fairly stable and with few edits in itself, could be temporarily protected from anonymous contributions. Riggwelter 17:12, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Yeah, I'm generally against a lot of page protections, but this is just such an important page and I doubt the need for anons to edit it without discussing on talk page first anyway – cacahuatetalk 19:07, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

This is a really important page, and for that reason alone (combined w/ the spam problem), I am sympathetic if not enthusiastic for an anon-level protection. But I'd like to add that it's really important that everyone keep in mind that this is an editable & collaborative policy, not some sort of set-in-stone law of Wikitravel. If we do protect, we should remain amenable to temporary un-protects to help anon editors revise this policy upon requests. And we should consider only protecting for a month or so, to see if the spammers move along. --PeterTalk 14:07, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Wise words, and I concur. Besides, it is apparent that the spammers' interest is rather periodic. Riggwelter 14:54, 12 May 2008 (EDT)